TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
>Thanks so much to everyone who responded. I will
>pursue trade-publication review of our training
>materials.
Anna...another consideration.
This is not to be confused with customer surveys...they usually don't work.
However, at a gig a few years ago, we had a specific subset of customers
that tier3-level customer engineers were able to organized into focus
groups. These were usually the same ones who were beta version users of the
software. Since this software was millions-of-dollars type of software
(think along the lines of workforce management of a multinational telecom
company, or 800-service software for a phone company), these customers saw
it to their benefit that the documentation was top caliber..also keep in
mind that the company I worked for was CMM5.
Anyway...we had a doc set (about 2500 pages over 25 books) that we thought
maybe needed to be reengineered, so I was assigned to work with a pair of
customers to create an alternate version of the doc set. This involved a
trip a month to their location in Dallas, I was in NJ. During the month, we
would work via email to reorganize/rewrite/add/omit/change the document, and
on the monthly visit, I got to tag along with the actual user in the field
for a day to see how the changes were accepted...sometimes well, sometimes
we scrapped the month's work.
So...I don't know whether you have any customers who are willing to devote
time/effort/cost to work with you to evaluate the documentation, but you
cannot get any better than actual users who have something at stake in your
docs who know that they are being taken seriously.
John Posada
Senior Technical Writer
Barnes&Noble.com
jposada -at- book -dot- com
NY: 212-414-6656
Dayton: 732-438-3372
Although she lives with seven other men, she's not easy.
------ Magic Mirror
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Purchase RoboHelp X3 in April and receive a $100 mail-in
rebate, plus FREE RoboScreenCapture and WebHelp Merge Module.
Order here: http://www.ehelp.com/techwr-l
Help celebrate TECHWR-L's 10th Anniversary starting this month!
Check out the contests at http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/special/contests/
Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday TECHWR-L....
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as:
archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
